(Newser)
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It was "a bit of a soap opera" in court today for the fifth day of Oscar Pistorius' murder trial, a journalist tweeted. Pistorius was "transfixed" on the witness stand as his teary ex-girlfriend Samantha Taylor told the court he kept a gun on him "all the time" when the pair dated in 2011 when she was just 17—a relationship that she says ended when Pistorius cheated on her with Reeva Steenkamp, NBC News reports via a correspondent's tweets. Taylor described how Pistorius kept a gun on his bedside table as he slept, or next to his prosthetic legs on the floor, in a room that was "very dark." She says he woke her several times over the course of their relationship fearing an intruder; one time, he checked around the house with his gun, she said, per the Telegraph, which noted the defense seemed to make the point that though he woke Taylor if he feared a break-in, he apparently didn't react the same way with Steenkamp.

Taylor also noted she saw Pistorius angry on occasion, and he screamed at her a few times. As to what that sounded like? "He sounds like a man," she said, via a second correspondent, seemingly disputing Pistorius' lawyer's theory that female-sounding screams heard before Steenkamp's death came from the athlete himself. Also mentioned was a shooting incident when Pistorius and a male friend were pulled over by police with Taylor in the backseat. Pistorius, who had his gun on the front seat, was angered when the officer unloaded it and Pistorius said he wasn't allowed to touch it, the Telegraph reports. Later, the two friends fired a shot out of the car's sunroof, "to irritate the police," Taylor said. "They fired the shot and then they laughed." Pistorius was again seen covering his ears during testimony today—but there was no gagging.

They will take his artificial legs away in fear they could be used as a weapon. He won't be able to run from Bubba and there will be no legs to get in the way when he's spun like a top.

NSA-CIApuppet

Mar 8, 2014 5:32 AM CST

According to news reports on other services the defense is botching the cross examination by failing to ask leading questions, instead giving witnesses choices. In the US that could result in reversal on appeal for ineffective counsel. The leading question is a venerated dogma of cross examination and with good reason proven over several centuries.

sugacan2

Mar 7, 2014 7:18 PM CST

It just does not seem plausible to me that someone would hear noises in their home in the middle of the night and not check to see if the other person who shares their home is still lying beside them in bed or not. Makes absolutely no sense at all. Even if you were scared to death your first instinct would be to wake the other person and ask them if they hear anything or at the very least turn your head to the side to see if the other person was in the bed or up and about making the noises you heard. He knew exactly who he was shooting at.